Slightly disheveled

Last night, Wednesday night, I came home a few minutes before seven. It was raining. The traffic was thick. I was tired. I saw my leftover salt-and-vinegar flavored potato chips and French onion dip. That’s what I had for dinner washed down with cold water. I ate it in front of my new TV set, which I purchased recently without flinching. My old TV set, one night, just reduced its picture into what looked like Angelina Jolie’s lips. The picture tube had given up the ghost. But when it did that I just had a new job, so I gave it away to my driver and bought myself one of these new ones — a wide, flat screen.

I kept searching for Gray’s Anatomy and Desperate Housewives, my Tuesday night favorites, and couldn’t find them. Suddenly I realized it was Wednesday. I was too tired to make necklaces, which is what I’ve been doing at home and at work, especially since I’ve learned how to link wires together. I always do that with the TV set on. All my hobbies I do with the TV set on. It smoothens the process. Somewhere in my mind I knew there was something I had to do but could not remember what. So I played a little Free Cell on my computer, then played Bejewelled on my iPod and fell asleep.

I dreamt of being in the hospital helping my daughter who had a new baby. I was crazy about the new baby, as I have been always. I love newborn babies. There are two in my building now, one girl, the other a boy. Every morning when I leave for work I see them having their sunbaths and I remember my little ones so many years ago. How adorable they were, how intoxicating their sweet baby smells, before they grew up, got sick and began throwing up on me. But nevertheless, I loved their baby days.

In my dreams there is an image that recurs. It is about a light squash-colored apartment building of three floors, a big, wide apartment house by the Pasig River somewhere. I always plan to live there but they never have a unit for me because when people move in, they don’t want to move out. The units are big with beautiful windows and a breathtaking view of the river but there never is one for me. Last night I dreamt of it again, though I already lived in my dream on the third floor of an apartment house by a river whose water came up to my windowsill. I wondered what had happened to the floors below though the tone of the dream was happy. Everyone in it was younger.

Then at 5:30 am, I awoke with a start. My column! I had not written my column. I checked my cell to see if someone had remembered to remind me. No. Maybe if I got up to write it now, maybe it will still make the deadline, which was last night. I knew I should not have played those computer games but, hey, I am not young. I forgot.

Two Mondays ago I went to the birthday dinner of Ricki, with whom I worked many years ago, and who remains one of my good friends. We were all talking about growing old. When I’m putting on makeup without my glasses, I said, I am delighted by the way I look. I tell myself, look, you’re still pretty. Then I put on my glasses and I am stunned. Who is that old woman in the mirror? They all laughed. It was an experience universally shared. We all had more white or more colored hair. The looks were going but life stayed on and happily for all of us, I think.

My mother, who had Level 7 Alzheimer’s Disease, passed away last Dec. 6. I shed very few tears at her passing. I wondered why. Then I remembered that the September before, when she woke up screaming one day and would not stop so I had to bring her to the hospital so her neurologist could sedate her properly, I came home and, alone, I wept unabashedly for almost the whole day. Maybe that’s when I felt I had really lost her. These days I dream of her young, pretty, laughing with me and I know that wherever she is she is fine. I don’t worry about her anymore.

Tomorrow, I will turn 66. My goodness, that’s old, I tell myself. I will have lunch at my home, Lily Pad, in Calamba, with a few friends from my first job, all very dear to me. Tina, who runs the restaurant there, offered to host it, sent me text yesterday saying that typhoons had made the garden look slightly disheveled. I texted back. We are all old friends. We are also slightly disheveled so it really does not matter. Thanks a lot for deciding to host this lunch.

So another year has passed, this time a happy year. What have I learned? Life is textured. One day it is full of problems that turn your hair white and put wrinkles on your face. Other days it is full of laughter at odd things. One thing I’ve noticed. I had lunch with two of my younger cousins yesterday. The older one stayed with her husband a long time then finally divorced him (about a year and a half before he died) according to the rigid laws of the lands they were living in. Her hair is almost all white. The younger one has stayed with her husband for over 30 years, has more white hair than me. I left marriage early ignoring the laws and working for my own money. What does that teach you? Husbands and white hair go together. Isn’t that ridiculously funny?

It’s probably the most important lesson I’ve learned.

* * *

Please text comments to 0917-8155570.